Jeffrey Jennings zoomed his Nikon camera on a trailer parked 2,000 feet below in Oakland. From his perch in a California Highway Patrol airplane, the deputy chief of operations captured shot after shot and uploaded the images.

On the ground, CHP Detective Mike Moses received the laser-sharp photos within minutes. Despite obvious attempts to paint over them, the outline of the words “Stroke of Luck Racing” could still be read on the trailer.

Moses just as quickly emailed the pictures to 69-year-old San Ramon resident Billy Chadwick, who confirmed what the investigators suspected: The trailer was his and might be holding his $100,000 race car.

The recovery of Chadwick”s prized possession three days after it was stolen from his home in early September demonstrated how advancements in surveillance and image technology have enhanced investigations of such cases. From 3-D digital scanners to high-tech video systems to devices that intercept cellphone signals, the toys are changing the game.

“It was everything,” Marc Hinch, a CHP detective and member of the Alameda County Regional Auto Theft Task Force, said of how new technology helped change the entire investigation into Chadwick”s stolen car. “It”s the way social media put it in everybody”s thoughts and how it really took off.”

Statistics on the Bay Area”s high rate of auto theft show that the region”s detectives certainly need the technology. A recent National Insurance Crime Bureau study showed 29,093 vehicles were reported stolen in 2014 in the metro areas of San Francisco, Oakland and Hayward — the highest rate in the country. The San Jose-Santa Clara-Sunnyvale region ranked 10th, with 10,351 thefts. Nationally, according to the FBI, car thefts were down 5.2 percent from 2013 through the first six months of 2014, compared with the first six months in 2010 and 2011. A car was stolen every 45 seconds in 2014.

Stats aren”t kept on how many vehicles are recovered. Generally speaking, Hinch said, most cars are stolen for joy riding or to be used in other crimes, and detectives recover about 80 percent of them. With motorcycles, the recovery rate is much lower.

Detectives say both numbers would be substantially lower without some of the digital devices at hand. Twenty years ago, only about two of three stolen vehicles ever were found.

Jennings said the CHP”s fleet of planes includes those with a computer that runs a video system featuring long-distance lenses that show infrared heat trails. Their planes can catch speeders, monitor pursuits, find somebody who may be lost and dial up razor-crisp images of stolen property.

On the ground, detectives equipped with license-plate readers can receive full records of vehicles and their owners in moments, downloaded to video systems mounted in their patrol cars. “Amazing,” Hinch calls it. “Comes back in less than a second.”

How pervasive is the technology? In the affluent Marin County community of Tiburon, cameras mounted at the town”s entry and exit points record every license plate that comes and goes. Other cities are likely to follow, and many already incorporate license-plate readers in various locations.

Critics object to the ever-growing amount of surveillance, which in San Jose eventually may soon include license-plate readers on the back of garbage trucks. Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmen Johnny Khamis and Raul Peralez have proposed the city equip the trucks with readers that would send data collected from cars along its route.

“Look, it”s a good thing that crimes are being solved. That”s the job of police, to keep communities safe,” said Chris Conley, a privacy and free speech attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. “But our concern is that a lot of this stuff is being collected on hypotheticals. … Massive amounts of information about innocent people are being collected that we believe should be kept private.”

Conley said balancing the right to privacy with technological innovation becomes an even more slippery slope considering the speed in which digital developments proceed. Conley points to StingRay tracking devices, also known as cell site simulators, which mimic cellphone towers and send out signals that trick cellphones into transmitting their locations and other identifying information.

“These devices allow the government to amass massive amounts of information about law-abiding citizens that previously were not available,” Conley said. “That includes intimate details about a person”s life. That information is stored somewhere and can be subject to abuse. We believe such information about innocent people should not be the government”s business even to collect.”

Veteran Concord police Sgt. Ken Carlson says cutting-edge equipment such as the digital 3-D scanner used by his department saves hours processing a crime scene and can process 500,000 data points per minute as it rotates 360 degrees at a scene — thus allowing investigators to determine quickly what all aspects of the scene look like from every possible angle.

“But what we save on the back end, with time saved and the amount you can get done, that”s very hard to calculate,” Carlson said.

A fatal crash earlier this year offers a glimpse. In a May 18 wreck that killed 56-year-old Mohammad Ibrahimi, of Concord, a truck T-boned another car while driving on Concord Boulevard after reportedly running a red light. A Martinez resident, 18-year-old Alana Urban, was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter but has not been charged as the investigation continues.

The scanner played a critical role laying out the scene from all angles, determining the speed of the cars and acquiring other evidence. Police spent five hours at the scene that day. Previously, the investigation would have taken all day, Carlson said.

“It improves the accuracy and efficiency,” he said. “You never eliminate human error entirely, but it reduces that margin of error by a ton — you know, maybe something so small as those small measurements you might otherwise take by hand. And while you”re reducing your margin for error, you”re much more time and labor efficient.”